


Lydia

by Kanene_Rose



Category: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016), Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
Genre: Explicit Language, F/F, Grief/Mourning, I swear, It's not that dark of a story, Lesbian Character, Mentions of Death, References to Depression, Sexuality, The rest of the tags are just in case:, Useless Lesbians
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-03-26 04:45:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13850370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kanene_Rose/pseuds/Kanene_Rose
Summary: "Lydia had known Abraham Portman back when she was a little girl, long before anyone had openly accused him of cheating on his wife during his ‘hunting’ trips or dared to insinuate that his bedtime stories about monsters were PTSD-altered memories from the war. Something about the circumstance of his death—crazed, raving about the very monsters he’d told her about during sleepovers, searching for his guns, which had long been revoked by his own son—had dredged up the worst gossip, and Lydia couldn’t help but cringe whenever someone mentioned anything that could implicate Abe of having less-than-perfect intentions. All of her life, he’d been a pillar of strength and truth—if from a distance—and she had always meant to keep it that way."Lydia visits Abe's grandson, because his family thinks he's gone crazy and a friend could help bring him back to reality. When she arrives, however, she finds that the Portmans already have a few uninvited guests.Movie-verse characters and book-verse plot. Takes place after the events in Library of Souls.Disclaimer: I own none of MPHPC.





	1. Welcome to Florida

**Author's Note:**

> There's not a lot of Lesbian Miss P anywhere for me to read, so I decided to write some myself...please comment and tell me what you think. I love to hear your thoughts!

Amanda.

That was the first name, in alphabetical order, of all the girls on the bus that had _not_ introduced themselves. Next were Andrea, Briana, Christina, Catherine, Diane, Emily, Fernanda, and Mia. They each had donned a bored or placid expression, put in earbuds, and pretended to be interested in anything other than the people in the surrounding seats. Lydia couldn’t really blame them; the bus was overcrowded and hot, and those perverts and weirdos that normally peeped somewhat secretly between stops were now plainly staring at the cleavage and sweat that such weather entailed.

No, she’d messed up. Julia came before Mia. Then it was herself, Morgan, Paige, Victoria, and...Shit, no. She missed someone.

Lydia took a head count: there were seventeen girls, including herself, and only fourteen names. Fuck.

“Excuse me,” a short, redheaded boy said, standing awkwardly in the aisle. “Is this seat taken?”

Lydia shook her head and went back to the names; it was a sort of game she had invented to keep herself distracted during long commutes, but it’d developed in the past few months into something of an obsession. If she was stuck on public transport for more than an hour, then she was scrounging and counting and making different lists—unless, of course, by some miracle, she was actually able to fall asleep, which wasn’t always the smartest thing to do while traveling alone.

Amanda, Andrea, Briana, Christina, Catherine, Diane, Emily, Fernanda, Julia, and _Kendall_. That was one of them.

“So, do you live around here?” the boy asked. His voice was as greasy as his hair, which had been dampened and flattened by an ugly gold-orange and maroon baseball cap for some high school team.

“No,” she said, only slightly irritated.

She missed a Jennifer. So it went: Julia, Jennifer, Kendall, Mia, Morgan—

“I’m Brian,” he pressed, turning toward her. In this position—with his arm raised, resting on the back of the seat, and his legs spread slightly—Lydia was subject to a whole new level of stench that hadn’t been palpable until now. He gave an unreadable chuckle when she scrunched her nose up out of sheer disgust. “What’s your name?”

“Not important.”

Mia, Morgan, Paige, _Rachel_ , there we go. Then Victoria. That should have been it, she thought, but there was still one name missing.

“What’s a beautiful girl like you doing all alo—”

“I’m not alone,” Lydia lied. She looked him in the eye, as if this would help make her statement seem any more legitimate, and slung her book bag over her shoulder. “You forget that girls travel in packs.”

It took her a moment, perhaps less, to figure out who she’d skipped over and, of course, it was the girl sitting directly in front of her.

“Eva!” she squeaked.

The girl turned cautiously, holding one arm across her chest to bar any unwanted attention.

“Were you talking to—”

“Yeah, you, Eva,” Lydia laughed. “How’d your Chemistry finals go? Last you told me, you were afraid you were going to flunk.”

Eva’s eyes suddenly widened in realization and she relaxed, adopting an enthusiasm in her tone that she would have thought impossible a moment before, when the only sensations her overheated brain could register were the heat itself and her annoyance at the constant stares she received from the men on the bus.

“Can you believe I actually got away with a B on the final exam?” she said in mock disbelief.

“Oh, fuck! Congrats,” Lydia squealed, leaning forward so that she nearly rested her forehead against the back of the other girl’s seat. She stayed there for more than half an hour, until the redheaded boy got off begrudgingly and the bus began to pull away from his stop. “Thank you _so_ much for that.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Eva winked. “We’ve got to look out for one another. It’s what girls do, right?”

“Right.”

“But you have to tell me how you’ve survived this long, in this heat, in _that_ ,” she giggled, eyeing Lydia up and down.

The latter was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt with form-fitting jeans and boots...not, perhaps, the best outfit to be wearing in Florida in the summer, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances; her only other clothes were in the book bag that fit easily on her lap, and she didn’t want to think of the looks she’d get if she wore any of _those_ onto the bus. The best she could do to answer the other girl was to move her long, dark hair to the side and reveal that the shirt was actually cut from shoulder to shoulder. A good amount of the wind that swept through the windows when the bus was in motion took a detour, chilling her back and neck in the process.

“Smart. Look, I gotta go, this is my stop. But it was really nice meeting you,” Eva said, throwing her purse over one shoulder and a duffle bag over the other. “Stay safe, okay?”

“Of course.”

Lydia went back to her game. Too many people had come and gone while she was talking with Eva, so she would need to start all over again; with five, maybe ten, minutes to go until she’d be getting off, there really was no sense with her trying. She shifted into the aisle seat and placed her bag beside her.

She had made a friend. Well...sort of. She’d made a friendly acquaintance, and that was good enough for her. The girl hadn’t even questioned how she’d known her name without asking, or how she knew she’d taken Chemistry the previous semester, but Lydia chalked it up to her natural ability to make people forget.


	2. First Glance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long. I've been doing a lot of school work and I received a request, which has turned out to be much longer than intended.

Lydia had only just arrived home when she’d received Mrs. Portman’s letter. The writing, in some places, was so embellished that it was nearly illegible, as if the woman had been trying too hard, and the content itself was vague. All that Lydia could gauge was that Maryanne wanted someone to come and visit Jacob, who’d lost his grandfather last summer, to relieve some of the loneliness he’d supposedly suffered since. The woman spent pages and pages reminiscing about the days when the two of them would play explorer in the backyard with Abe, and wasted even more ink reminding Lydia that she had always been there for Jacob, looking out for him like a good older sister “ _because we always did think of you as family_.”

In essence, Lydia surmised, she was going to be his babysitter.

Of course, this wasn’t at all out of Mr. and Mrs. Portman’s character. They’d both had difficulty dealing with things that were out of place, and Jacob had always been an extraordinarily peculiar child. It was part of the reason she’d moved to New Hampshire in the first place…that, and the fact that she’d earned their ire at twelve years old by accidentally scaring Jacob (at the time, only eight) so badly that he had to sleep in their bed for a month.

She hadn’t seen him since.

Not that she didn’t  _want_ to visit Jakey—he was her only real friend as a child, and she loved him immensely—but she hadn’t really been able to go back to Florida, nor had she been invited. Lydia had been so surprised by the letter, in fact, that she’d considered the possibility that it was all some sort of dream—that she was so desperate for a semblance of her old life that her mind had started coming up with delusions to please itself. Or her. Whichever the brain worked for…

Lydia hadn’t hesitated. She sent a quick return to Mrs. Portman to confirm that she’d be travelling by bus all the way down and would be arriving, most likely, somewhere within the next two weeks. Nothing was definite, especially since money was scarce, but she was determined to have something of a family again, even if it meant piecing together one that had so recently shattered.

 

*              *              *

 

Lydia arrived at the Portman residence just as the sun was setting. She’d expected the normal, quiet neighborhood she remembered from her childhood, but now the house seemed to be radiating a strange energy, as if it were hiding something within; an unnatural hush had fallen over the street as she approached the front door.

“Mrs. Portman?” she asked warily, peering in through the thin strip of glass beside the door frame. Lydia had never  _knocked_ before in her life, and why should she? She was always expected. But with one final glance into the empty entrance hall, she raised her fist and called out one last time, “Mr. and Mrs. Portman. It’s Lydia.”

Something was wrong. Not  _wrong_ wrong, just…different.

Lydia slung her bag over her shoulder and made her way to the back yard. There, sitting in the shadow, his legs spread out in the grass and his arm wrapped around the shoulders of a very pretty blond girl, was Jacob. He was as thin and scrawny as he’d been as a boy, with the same light brown hair and blue eyes; the only discernible difference was the confidence therein. For the first time, she could see traces of Abe in him, not just in his physical appearance—the biological side of what composed a man, which held no weight on  _who_ he was—but in the way he presented himself.

Lydia had known Abraham Portman back when she was a little girl, long before anyone had openly accused him of cheating on his wife during his ‘hunting’ trips or dared to insinuate that his bedtime stories about monsters were PTSD-altered memories from the war. Someone may very well have had these ideas all that time ago, but they had not been said aloud until after the kindly old man had passed. Something about the circumstance of his death—crazed, raving about the very monsters he’d told her about during sleepovers, searching for his guns, which had long been revoked by his own son—had dredged up the worst gossip, and Lydia couldn’t help but cringe whenever someone mentioned anything that could implicate Abe of having less-than-perfect intentions. All of her life, he’d been a pillar of strength and truth—if from a distance—and she had always meant to keep it that way.

That his grandson seemed to have inherited his sense of adventure and courage was enough to reassure her, at least for the time being.

She stood at the corner of the yard, just close enough to see Jake and the girl, whose back was currently to Lydia, and kept the front door in view. She was waiting for either Mr. and Mrs. Portman to come see who’d called  _or_ for one of the teenagers in the grass to notice that she was there. At the moment, she didn’t much have the spirit to move.

But it had been a long day, and a long two weeks, give or take, of sitting on buses and sleeping on park benches, her bag clamped to her torso in the hope that it would stay there until she woke; while she wanted nothing more than the energy to run up and give Jakey a hug, she knew she  _needed_ a place to rest and, perhaps, a bit of something to eat.

Lydia dragged her feet back to the front door and raised her hand to knock. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a woman in an old-fashioned skirt and jacket, her dark blue hair pulled up into a strange bun and a smoking pipe dangling from her lips. The latter was moving in and out of view of the sidelight window, checking on the two little girls who’d just run through the entrance hall, when she spotted Lydia. Her eyes, a dazzling blue, narrowed instantly; her sharp gaze swept Lydia in an second, analyzing her movements, her intentions, her character, until she deemed her harmless and moved to answer the door.

Lydia could have noticed the subtle way the woman had appraised her appearance, or lingered a moment too long on her dark unbrushed hair, or fixed her own skirt after seeing the wrinkled, tattered mess that Lydia dared to call jeans—all things that would have normally made her over-anxious and self-conscious—but her mind was fixated on one idea in particular, screaming and shouting and  _pleading_ the word with all of its might:

_Ymbryne_.


End file.
